Chapter Forty: Not-So-Divine Healing (Patreon)

The very moment we stepped out of the truck we were in a fight.

Even with the spotlight aimed at the door, preventing the Grotesques inside from pouring out, there were still those coming from the graveyard around us. There were dozens of them.

I had a hammer in each hand. My gun wouldn’t do me much good here. I needed to make every hit count because even with the buffs I had gotten, even with Arthur sharing his Mind Over Monster trope, I had to hit them in just the right spot to get them to go down. If I hit living flesh they wouldn’t even react.

That’s not even to mention that my abysmal hustle meant I couldn’t hit anything that wasn’t at point-blank range.

Arthur and Valerie stuck with guns.

With Arthur's shotgun depleted of ammo, they were down to handguns and one semiautomatic rifle, but they were both capable shots. They also still had the flare gun, but that wasn’t much good in a brawl like this.

The beam of light from the spotlight created a safe pathway for us as we ran to the church. Arthur carried his duffel full of Molotovs and guns.

The trouble was we were standing in the very light that we needed to keep the horde from pouring out of the building toward us. It took longer for the gargoyles o reanimate than it did for them to turn to stone in the first place. We had a window of seconds to kill them before they could kill us.

As we were attacked from the sides we would wait until the creatures got close enough to us that they would start to solidify.

A small gargoyle attacked me from the left.

Smack.

No good I hit living flesh.

Crack.

My second hammer found stone and smashed it to pieces.

Luckily whenever Donald was mass producing these things, he had created them to be quite small. That made sense; he didn't want to create a bunch of large powerful stupid ones. It was more logical for him to create lots of small ones. The small intelligent ones would still be able to spread the Grotesque curse.

Most of them were only about the size of a terrier or a bobcat.

The thing was: these weren’t the intelligent ones. In fact, I hadn’t seen any intelligent Grotesques since we had gotten there.

One or two of the creatures were almost human-sized. Luckily, intelligence didn't appear to correlate with size. Some of the big ones were so stupid they would step right into the light just to get mowed down with a single shot or strike from my hammer.

None of the creatures thought to attack the light.

“Move!” Arthur said. We needed to make our way to the door. That was the last place I wanted to be.

When we finally got to the building, it was like shooting fish in a barrel as most of the gargoyles in this area had been frozen to stone by the spotlight and then had gotten tangled up with each other as they struggled to get through the door.

Shattering them was easy.

As soon as they were moved out of the way more would come out, get turned to stone, and get shattered.

We still hadn’t found the smart ones. They must have been in the catacombs where we were heading.

If only we could have taken the spotlight with us.

We almost made it inside without a single injury.

I didn't even see where the Grotesque came from.

I felt it though.

Its long thin jagged teeth sank into my right leg. I could feel its teeth against my bone, crushing, crunching.

I was down and screaming before I even knew what got me.

“Arthur,” Valerie said. “Watch my back.”

She pulled out a small hammer. She got right down next to me and lifted my leg up so that the creature attached to me would be exposed to the spotlight. Then she brought the hammer down on its head.

That was the most excruciating pain I had ever been in in my life. When she broke its head open, the force of the blow sank the creature’s teeth back into the wounds they had just created, nearly causing me to faint. Its teeth with thin and snapped off when she struck it.

She retrieved a first aid kit from her purse. She began rapping my leg in gauze or fabric or whatever the stuff was called. Some type of field dressing or bandage.

“You're lucky none of these were deep,” she said. “We need to leave them in there, so they don't bleed out. You should have full mobility for now.”

Bullshit.

She grabbed a small round pill-sized object from her purse and handed it to me. “This will help with the pain.”

I dropped it in my mouth. It was a candy-coated piece of chocolate.

Regardless, the pain did ease almost immediately. I was able to move my leg again. I could even stand. Valerie’s collection of healing tropes allowed us to just pretend I wasn’t horrifically injured. Despite the damage, I didn't even have a Hobbled status. And yet I knew that under those bandages, my leg was irreparably destroyed, and my bone snapped.

Healing magic was very weird in Carousel.

Something else haunted me about this: I knew that all of the healing tropes Valerie had just used on me were temporary. Soon I would be feeling the full effects of the injury I had just received. That fact was on my mind with every step.

~~~

Even with me out of commission, Valerie and Arthur were able to clear the Grotesques coming from the cemetery around us.

“This isn't enough?” Arthur said. “There should be more of them.”

We were On-Screen, so I didn't know if that was his character talking or Arthur himself, but either way I agreed. The way they talked about it, Donald had been down below in the catacombs making hundreds of these creatures. Thousands.

Was it really possible that he had destroyed so many in his quest to create intelligent Grotesques that we were only met with a few dozen?

“We didn't explore the whole catacombs,” Valerie suggested. She had begun trying to break away the now lifeless stone limbs of the Grotesques that blocked the doorway.

I did my best to help. Walking on a leg that was destroyed and held together with only a bandage was very difficult to get used to.

Arthur scanned the skies hoping that he could find some explanation for the missing hundreds of gargoyles by looking there. Unless his perceptive abilities were better than mine, they weren't there either.

“Where are the smart ones?” he pondered aloud.

After a couple of minutes, we broke through the barricade and were back in the church.

It looked like my prediction about the statues underneath the white sheet was right. They were long gone.

“Oh God,” Valerie said. She was looking up ahead toward the back of the church. At first, I couldn't tell what it was she was looking at, but then I saw him.

We had left Donald tied up; we hadn't really had time to untie him the last time we were here. He was still lying on his stomach, hands and feet bound.

What was left of him at least.

It turned out that the Grotesques he had helped to create hadn’t been so keen on sparing him after all.

As we approached cautiously, we noted that Donald’s arms, legs, and much of his torso had been attacked viciously with tooth and claw. I couldn't even make out too many distinct bite marks there were so many of them.

As we got close Arthur nudged him with his foot.

He let out a painful groan.

He was still alive.

Arthur bent down next to him and tried turning him over onto his side so that he could look at him. The man was in terrible shape.

“Where's the army?” Arthur asked. “Where are all these intelligent Grotesques that you helped make? Where's the fight?”

I could see Donald's lips moving like he was trying to talk. Whatever was left of his consciousness was fading quickly.

Arthur grabbed him by the hair and pulled them upward.

“Where is this apocalypse you were talking about?”

Donald said something but it was too quiet for me to hear. Arthur put his ear close so that he could try to make out what it was Donald was saying.

“He’s saying ‘Everywhere.’”

Arthur dropped the man back down.

“We have to find that main Grotesque that you were talking about,” he said.

“Why? What does everywhere mean?” Valerie asked.

The truth was Valerie already knew. We all did. We just had to tell the audience.

“He already sent them out,” I said.

Arthur made eye contact with me with a subtle nod, confirming my suspicion.

Donald had already sent out all of the intelligent Grotesques. They were probably in the same packaging that Janette had received. That was the plan. There weren't going to be huge swarms of intelligent Grotesques at the church. He had mailed them out—hundreds of them.

“You mean…” Valerie said.

“People are dying right now. Everywhere he sent those things,” Arthur said. He looked at me. “You better be right about this.”

I nodded.

At that moment I received an urge that was becoming all too familiar. The story was putting words in my mouth. There was something I needed to say as much as I dreaded to say it.

“Those statues under the white sheets are gone,” I said quietly. We had noticed at the moment we got there but our characters hadn't.

There was a noise above us. The high ceilings of the church were perfect for concealing the types of enemies we faced—the ones that could fly.

Above us, half a dozen flying Grotesques sized from a dog all the way up to bigger than a man, begin gliding down in a swarm of teeth and claws.

“Into the catacombs,” Arthur commanded.

We ran back to the door that had once been concealed behind a large curtain. Valerie opened it and Arthur beckoned me forward. I ran as fast as I could.

Not fast enough.

A Grotesque tackled me before I could make it through the door. Unlike the first one I had dealt with; this one was actually trying to get at me. In a matter of seconds, its claws had dug into my stomach and my chest up near where my collarbone was. The pain was immeasurable.

I wasn't able to look down. I think my collarbone was broken, maybe even downright slashed in two, and that movement was too painful for my body to let me do it. If I were to guess, I would say that the injury was severe. Fatal.

Arthur was quick to pounce on the Grotesque. He drove it off of me with the heel of his boot and then fired a few good shots at it. Even in its living flesh form, it couldn't take that many shots from Arthur at such a close range. It jumped back into the air and flew off.

I couldn't move.

Arthur grabbed my hand and began pulling me back toward the door to the catacombs.

I'm not proud to say it but in my panic and pain, I looked up to Arthur and said, “Do it. Finish me.” I gestured toward his firearm. My speech was slurred, difficult. Every movement of my jaw sent shockwaves down into my chest.

In my defense, I think that his Mercy Kill trope influenced me to say that. I was fatally wounded and in great pain. The words just came out.

Arthur looked down at me. I think I saw pity in his eyes for a moment. Only a moment.

“Can't let you go yet. Still need your gift.”

He dragged me through the door and Valerie pulled it shut behind him.